The bodies of people
being fed to these dogs,
and dogs eating them, and sitting, being frightened,
knowing that if they see me they will bite me,
I think...
I was so terrified.
[CAT] So Rwanda was largely made up of two tribes.
Can you explain the first moment
where you really realised there was a difference between these tribes?
The first time that I really realised
there was a difference was in 1990.
I was in primary school,
and our teacher asked us,
"Are you a Hutu, are you a Tutsi?"
And you would raise up your hand.
And I didn't really know what they were asking,
so I didn't raise up my hand.
I went back home, and they said,
"Tomorrow don't come to school
when you don't know your tribe."
So that day, that time when I was sent back home,
my mum told me, "When they ask you next time,
stand up in the Tutsi."
So we were only about, like, two students,
or three, in the class.
And you have that feeling like, I am not wanted,
I am not accepted, my classmates don't really like me
because of how I was born,
and I didn't have a choice about it.
I didn't understand why am I being called a cockroach?
Why am I being bullied at school?
Why do I have to be beaten,
or see people being beaten for being Tutsi?
So those things were happening when I was growing up.
And really it's the ideology propaganda
that was leading to genocide in 1994.
[CAT] What was their goal, the Hutus?
I wish I could answer that question.
Their goal was to exterminate every Tutsi.
I remember sitting in the lounge
with my dad and my two brothers, because my mum was away,
she went to visit our grandparents,
and she was with our last born, who was two years old then.
And he said, "I'm not sure if your mum is going to get back,
they are going to kill us because we are Tutsi."
And he just gave us a briefing,
he said, you know, "Put on-"
We were already in our pyjamas, ready to go to bed,
and he said, "Put on your clothes, wear layers."
So we had two layers each.
And he said, "If you hide, don't hide together
because if you are together, they will kill you all."
The next day, on the 7th, in the morning,
there were all these people running around the village.
I remember hiding under the bed on that day,
they came to our house,
and my dad was not there because he went to hide.
They said, "Where is the cockroach, where is inyenzi?"
That's the word they used to use in Kinyarwanda.
And they are talking about the soldiers
that were fighting against them.
I'm like, "We don't know where they are."
So, on the same day in the evening,
I went to hide in the bush, and when I was hiding, I went,
of course, you know, our dad told us don't hide together.
So, I went alone and I was hiding in the bush
and wandering around and waiting.
I was lucky because I didn't have an identity card.
We used to have identity cards in Rwanda
that's written which tribe are you, so...
And you don't get that ID until you are 18 or 16, I think.
So I wasn't being asked for ID,
so I would hide in front of people.
But there's a lady who was walking, hiding,
and she had the baby, and she had her ID,
and she was just showing her ID
and they just cut her head off.
She had a baby, I can't tell how old she was,
but it was so young, because she was still feeding her.
And walking, seeing this woman being killed,
and seeing the child sucking from its mother
when she's dead.
I was devastated, I could not pick her up.
I wanted to,
but I was so afraid to run around with this baby.
And...
Yeah, I just passed her,
and went and hid in one of the houses.
You could hear outside, the noise and people running.
"Oh, find that, there are Tutsis passing!"
So, people would be shouting because they saw someone.
When it became about evening, I walked back to my place,
and I went and hid in my,
you know, what I called a safe place.
Because it was a pit latrine, which is a toilet with a hole
that was completely full and no one was using,
and I went back and sat there.
Behind that pit latrine,
there used to be a football field,
and you would hear these Hutus sitting there,
they're drinking, they had alcohol,
and they were talking about how many Tutsi they have killed.
"Oh we killed so-and-so.
Oh we raped so-and-so."
And sitting there, I was just...
I knew that if they see me, they will come and kill me.
I was hiding in the bush, and people,
Hutu - the killers -
were running around, saying, "Come out, come out!"
With the dogs, I did say they were with dogs.
The bodies of people
being fed to these dogs,
and dogs eating them, and sitting, being frightened,
knowing that if they see me they will bite me.
I think...
I was just so terrified.
When I ran from that bush,
I just ran, I will say, like, maybe 100 metres,
and then I reached to the road.
When I heard they're making noise
and the dog running next to me,
so I ran away and I fell into the road, and they saw me.
They said, "Come, come!"
So someone just came and beat me
with the big stick they had.
Those sticks were kind of big on the top
and they had nails on.
I just fell into the hands of those people
that were waiting to kill us.
And I heard, you know, they will say,
if you had money and you will give it to them,
they will kill you by shooting you.
If you didn't, they'll cut your head off.
Some people, they will say,
"Oh, I will give you this, forgive me!"
But they didn't even have that mercy to forgive.
So they chopped people's heads off in front of me
and throw them in that big hole that was there.
I was numb, I saw many people killed,
I knew it was me next to be killed,
so I wasn't really worried, you know? I wasn't like,
'Oh, I'm going to be killed!'
I was just like, 'Yeah, that's what is happening.'
And it was only when there were two people ahead of me
that someone shouted, I don't even remember who,
I just heard a voice, they said,
"The bank in Kigali has been broken in,
they're robbing the bank."
So all the killers around us,
the attention was not on the people they're killing,
they wanted to go and get money.
I survived that day because of the greed of people,
so they ran away to get money,
and I ran off to the bush again
and stayed there.
[CAT] How long were you in the bush for?
So I was in the bush
for as much as three months.
It was either in the church, in which we were being killed,
and I was hiding among the dead bodies.
It was either in the pit latrine, I was by myself.
I was in the field by myself,
or I was in the queue to be killed.
So those three months
has been the longest horror nightmare that I have...
I feel like it lasted for eternity, if I may say,
because when we talk about it now,
we talk about three months, but for me it lasted for ever.
I felt like it lasted for ever
because I was not safe at all.
[CAT] You were only 12 years-old, as all of this was going on.
What was going on in your head?
You know, when...
when the death is all around you,
there's nothing else you think apart from dying.
I was numb.
I was ready, I knew I will be killed any time,
and I saw people being killed many times,
so I was just waiting to be killed.
So, I kept going until the last day,
when I heard, again, where we were hiding,
I left where I was and I came to see my brother.
He's there, he's hungry,
and I just sat with him, and the next thing,
what I hear from the neighbourhoods of people,
they are talking, "Kigali has been liberated."
And who liberated the country?
It's the RPF.
So that's when all the killers,
all the people that- they started running away from Rwanda
and go to Congo.
That was the end, that was the end.
When we see the RPF coming to you and saying,
"You are safe."
Then yeah, I knew that I am in good hands.
[CAT] What happened to the rest of your family over those three months?
Hmm, yeah.
So, my brother, my youngest brother,
was killed with my mum,
and he was two years old.
They dug under the ground
and they built on top of that,
so they will hide the children underneath.
There was about 50 children there,
so, like, under two, who could not run, three,
so my youngest brother was among those children
that were hidden there.
And the Hutu came, and when they found-
they saw one of the parents bringing food,
you know, found something and brought for those children.
They poured paraffin on that place and they just lit on fire
and all these children were burned,
including my youngest brother.
My third brother, who is a male,
was also killed during the genocide.
I once was with him, because they shot him with a grenade,
and it took part of his head.
And I was with him when
he was grasping his last breath.
I remember when he is asking me for water,
I didn't have anything to give him,
so that's my last day that I saw my brother being killed.
Gone, you know?
And yeah, and my second brother, Antoine,
he survived.
And my dad didn't die, he also survived,
but my two brothers and my mum
were killed in genocide.
[CAT] What impact, does going through something like that...
What sort of toll does that take on you?
It has been a long journey
to go through these things,
because I think what happened to me,
your memory has a capacity to kind of
keep some information,
and you don't think about them because you're not ready.
I think that's what happened to me.
At that time, we are talking about, like, five years,
six years after genocide,
three years, you know, those time periods, 10 years.
Sometimes I will not be able to sit with people
who were talking about their three-month experience,
because it was so painful.
And when it comes to April every year,
that's when I start feeling,
my body will actually feel it,
and I will have these memories,
I will think of what I saw,
but I just wanted to brush it off because I was not capable.
I was 22 then, finished my high school
and I am out,
I'm awaiting the high school results
to go to university, I don't have anything to do.
The job I got was with Aegis Trust,
and the job was to...
they had a project 10 years after the genocide,
to build what they called Kigali Genocide Memorial.
So, if you ask, did I know what I was signing up for?
Probably not.
It took me back to those three months,
because when I was doing my research,
going into the village, was to know,
how many Tutsi families were living in this village?
And how were they killed?
And then my job was to feed back to the office,
because they're trying to build data
of what happened 10 years later.
So that's the time, if I may say, 10 years after genocide,
I was just like, I've just woken up,
these things happened to me.
And then I lived that life again.
The job gave me a responsibility
to deal with whatever was happening,
and that's how I started the journey
of dealing with my trauma.
But doing something, contributing to the society as well,
giving dignity and respect to people we've lost.
Including my family.
[CAT] And how are you today?
I am alive.
Yes, how am I today?
I am doing great, I am thriving.
In 2004, I made a choice:
I want to start this journey of forgiving.
Is it easy?
No, it has never been easy,
and even now I speak about it, it's not easy.
Sometimes people will inter marriage into Hutu and Tutsis,
which was their will.
So I know one of my aunties married a Hutu man,
and this man killed her.
But I am committed to keep trying,
to keep forgiving when people wrong me,
when people are not making the right choices.
And that's what, really, I want to tell everyone
that I get the opportunity to share with.
And that's what I said
when I met the man who killed my auntie.
And I was sitting with him,
he looked at me. So remember, this is in 2016,
and the last time he knows me
it was before, in '93 or '92, I was a baby,
so, you know, I'm an adult.
And he looked at me and I said, "Do you know me?"
And he said, "Yes."
He could see me through my grandma,
who is his mother-in-law.
And so I said,
"Yes, I'm glad you know me,
I came here to say I forgive you."
The forgiveness is the key to your freedom,
that's how I see it.
And it's a choice and it's a journey
and it's not easy...
but it is the key to your freedom.